Difficulty Defined

[f|uke]

This is paraphrased from the Prima Official Game Guide.

Easy (Relative to Normal):
20% more ammo from items
Half damage from enemys
150% damage delt
Auto-Aim

Hard (Relative to Normal):
40% less ammo from items
150% damage from enemys
75% damage delt
No Aiming assistance

I'm not sure if Normal has auto-aim or not, but if it does I'm sure you can turn it off. IMHO, auto-aim is annoying as hell. It makes headshots quite difficult (at least it did in HL1), and with optical mice, aiming is no problem.

 

[Hazar]

Normal of course!

 

[Dr. Freeman]

normal sounds good for me

 

[Llama]

normal sounds good for me

And me

 

[ailevation]

:cheers: Normal for starting, then hard replaying... then you give yourself a treat and take the third time in a nice smooth ride on easy.

 

[DoctorGordon3]

Hard.

But this is so stupid....the AI should just get better with the diffculty level, no dang extra damage taken or whatever

 

[Llama]

Hard.

But this is so stupid....the AI should just get better with the diffculty level, no dang extra damage taken or whatever

No its not. Why tf do you want more intellignece? Theyde be bloody geniuses

 

[f|uke]

the AI should just get better with the diffculty level, no dang extra damage taken or whatever

To do that, either they'd have to dumb down the AI for normal/easy, or make their aiming more/less accurate. The former would just make the AI do stupid things, which sucks, and the later is essentially the same thing as taking more damage.

Theyde be bloody geniuses

I'm sure they're already as smart as they can be, hence my point.

 

[FISKER_Q]

No its not. Why tf do you want more intellignece? Theyde be bloody geniuses

Combines making their own resistance against city17 to take over the world

That's AI!

I'll just start easy and up. Unless autoaim can't be disabled.

 

[DoctorGordon3]

Which, is the flaw with games.

 

[Llama]

To do that, either they'd have to dumb down the AI for normal/easy, or make their aiming more/less accurate. The former would just make the AI do stupid things, which sucks, and the later is essentially the same thing as taking more damage.I'm sure they're already as smart as they can be, hence my point.

give them 99% accuracy?

 

[iamaelephant]

Well I would have said Easy but that sounds pathetic - half damage taken? Ridiculous!

 

[Tiddalick]

Im playing a one life rule on my first go...

So I don't know wehter to start on hard or normal.
I was thinking normal, so then I go go at it again with gun blazing on hard.

 

[UnmarkedOne]

Hard
40% less ammo from items
150% damage from enemys
75% damage delt
No Aiming assistance

Hard all the way, and I'll savor every moment. I like it when ammo's scarce and you have to make each shot count (and use the manipulator more often to conserve your rounds). The extra damage will make the enemies seem all the more real and threatening, also.

I'll play all the way through on Hard first, which will give me a good number of extra hours (beyond the expected 20), and then go back and relax my way through the adventure on Easy.

-UnmarkedOne

 

[The Mullinator]

Normal, easy just doesn't look proper and hard just looks frustrating.

Plus normally they design these games with "normal" difficulty in mind so its most likely to give the best gaming experience, although the increase probably won't even be noticable.

 

[bam23]

Normal sounds like the most balanced.

 

[Yogibbear]

ahaa auto-aim what the hell??? like isn't that for console fps's as it's hard to aim without a mouse?

 

[The Mullinator]

ahaa auto-aim what the hell??? like isn't that for console fps's as it's hard to aim without a mouse?

Its not uncommen on PC's. I think UT2K4 has it as well although it can't be used online. I think.

 

[Danimal]

Normal but if it auto-aims then hard unless I can turn off auto-aim

 

[FISKER_Q]

Well I would have said Easy but that sounds pathetic - half damage taken? Ridiculous!

Phew i only lost 50hp from that strider gun

 

[f0rked]

I think I'll start off playing it in easy, and if thats not enough of a challenge, or if it gets boring killing the combine, then I'll dynamically increase the difficulty to normal/hard. :sniper:

 

[LeXo5]

if there is an auto-aim on easy/normal i'll do hard ..... otherwisen ormal

 

[Abdi]

start off with Hard, I will definitely enjoy it more and it will take more time to finish the game. I dont want to finish it in 5 hours with Easy

 

[Forau]

ahaa auto-aim what the hell??? like isn't that for console fps's as it's hard to aim without a mouse?

What the hell? You missed the auto aim option in HL1?
Hard for me by the way.

 

[nutcrackr]

If you can turn auto-aim off for easy then easy it will be. I might try auto-aim for a bit, depends on how annoying it gets. Then I can play through normal and hard.

 

[raakkel]

Normal with no auto aim. If it seems too difficult or easy after few hours of playing i'll start over with different difficulty :>

 

[johnnypoopoopant]

normal...to get use to the game

hard is or might be too hard, but might be a fun challenge

 

[Yogibbear]

What the hell? You missed the auto aim option in HL1?
Hard for me by the way.

There was an aut-aim feature?
What the hell???? I must've missed something.....? :sniper:

 

[czrsink]

Yeah, the auto-aim feature did make life slighty easier in some respects, but in others, it was annoying because your crosshair would often move to an enemy before you saw it. It made navigating vents in the dark easy - as soon as a headcrab came into your 'line of sight', your crosshair would leap up. Good, but annoying at the same time.

 

[Volcane]

I will play through on normal first, and then through on hard.

 

[Esquire]

Well it seems like H-L2 will be such a good game that it will have massive replayability. So i'll make my first H-L2 experience on the normal difficulty. Then second time through i'll play on hard.

Ofcourse, if normal is too easy, i'll jump up to hard straight away. But if hard ends up with me spending more than 5mins to kill 3 combine soldiers, then i'll be runnin back to normal.

Definately no auto-aim.

 

[alan8325]

Something always bothered me about increasing the difficulty of a game by increasing enemy health and damage dealt. It just seems kind of cheap and throws off the realism a lot. If an enemy is shooting at you with an mp5, and you kill him and pick up the mp5, why should it do a different amount of damage for you?

I think the only ways they should change difficulty are through A.I. tactics, their aiming skill, available health and ammo, and numbers of enemys vs. allies.

 

[Forau]

There was an aut-aim feature?
What the hell???? I must've missed something.....? :sniper:

Yep, but hey, it sucked big time.
Turning it off made the game more easy

 

[Esquire]

Something always bothered me about increasing the difficulty of a game by increasing enemy health and damage dealt. It just seems kind of cheap and throws off the realism a lot. If an enemy is shooting at you with an mp5, and you kill him and pick up the mp5, why should it do a different amount of damage for you?

I think the only ways they should change difficulty are through A.I. tactics, their aiming skill, available health and ammo, and numbers of enemys vs. allies.

I strongly agree on all your difficulty changes.

Anyone played against the bots in CSS? They were easy but defeatable. They had a realisation time where if you came on their screen, they would delay about 1second before firing. Then i updated CSS and they suddenly became godlike. As soon as i came on their screen their crosshair would fly up to me and i would be dead, very quickly. They even knew how much bullets to fire at me to kill me.

 

[daveodeth]

Hard. I like to suffer.

 

[Sparta]

One thing i liked about Far Cry was that it had more then just 3 difficulties. And you were able to alter the .ini files for Deus Ex and Thief 3 to make your own difficulty levels. I hope you can do something similar with Half-Life 2.....hmmm i think i'll email Gabe now.

 

[Forau]

The thing I mostly hated about easy/hard was that hard was a bit too hard for me, but easy made the enemys look f*cking stupid.
The point was that the ai AND the damage was screwed up, and that was just one step too much. But now I'll play hard, anyway.

 

[Vinnie_NL]

WTF, no auto-aim in Hard?
j/k

I never use it, it's for consolekiddies
The first time I will play HL2 I'll do it on normal, and the second time maybe on hard.

 

[-JeZ-]

Normal, then hard on the second play through.

 

[theGreenBunny]

I'll probably play it through on every difficulty. I'll start on normal for a serious playthrough, then if I feel like it play it on easy to mess around with stuff. In the end I'll probably play it on hard.